Guild Wars 2

I thought this would be an interesting topic for the dungeon forums to see what people think or what are there thoughts on a GW2 “Raid”

Just a few ground rules in the discussions.

1)“Raid” has no meaning beyond being challenging PvE content, nothing more.

2) “Raid” is being used as a term for the sake of discussion

3)It has no other meanings to it such as more then 5 people as an example.

So with those rules in place il lay out how i would like to see a GW2 Raid handled.

Design- For design of a raid i personally wouldnt enjoy long raids, in my mind i would rather have multiple shorter ones that are part of a set. If you played wow gruuls layers was short and to the point, had 2 bosses and minimal trash and was a good example. No one enjoys difficult trash as its always unrewarding in every game, not to say it wont in gw2 but if you have ever done any dungeon before you know its the truth. Multiple little raids allow better room for pugs to form and break up time commitments.

Loot- First part of loot is rewards, the key to a raid is to not load all the rewards at the end. Raids should be designed with the thought you wont complete them initially thus means each boss needs to be rewarding not just completing the whole dungeon itself.

Progression- Having progression without stat progression means resistance. Fractals have agony resist so the new raid should require resist at higher difficulties. As to how that resist is gained is a whole other discussion . My mind there are two ways of doing this, either dropping new gear type that is equal to ascended gear in term of stats but allows a new resist infusion or making it some sort of permanent buff. You also can progress this in the opposite way by having weapons carry a buff specific to the dungeon that creates a debuff needed for fights.

Difficulty- We learned from fractals that to many levels make them meaningless , the difference between 16-17 is minimal and not noticeable. The biggest noticeable difference in fractals is every 10 levels and past a certain point there is no point to progress higher in fractals. My vote would be to limit the amount of difficulties available down to 5, this adds more meaning and more challenge. Not just adding health or damage but rather mechanics. If each level of difficulty added a new mechanic to a boss this would add to the challenge in a good way rather then scaling #’s up and allows most people to do lvl 1.

Size- I always felt 10 was a good # of people but thats me, i could see 5 and i could see more then 10. But i feel personally somewhere between 7-10 is a good size, 8 may be an odd group size but its enough to allow more things to happen that cant in a small group size but not to big.

Anyway im curious what your guys thoughts are if you made a gw2 raid?

What benefits do you want from an 8+ person raid that can’t be found in a 5 person group? Bigger is not necessarily better. A need for coordinated teamwork between 10 or more players is as much of a drawback as a benefit and will exclude many players (outside of guilds) from completing the content.

Open world events should provide the massive multi-player content although they could certainly be improved. Guild bounties also provide coordination challenges for more than 5 players with some challenging fights.

Because there are no dedicated tanks and healers, large-scale Mega Boss encounters would have to be designed in a way so that they are nearly zerg-proof. In this case, an outside mechanic would have to be implemented.

Alternatives to Tank/Healer setups:

• You might have to gather resources to fuel a very powerful weapon in order to weaken the defenses.
• You may have to use an outside device to progress through the encounter, like a consumable bundle or an NPC’s special ability.
• You may have to split your raid apart to solve puzzles just to unlock weakpoints for a specific boss.
• You may have to kill smaller bosses so that the big boss is much easier to kill. This implies the bigger boss siphons powers from the smaller bosses just to become more powerful. Though, you could earn more rewards if you choose to attempt to kill the bigger boss while in that boss’ “Hard Mode”.

Discussion for rewards would be a totally different wing of discussion, though I suppose it could be tied into the Guild Mission system, since large-scale organized content is often attempted in a guild setting.

As far as raid size goes, I think it should be varied. Meaning that you could enter the raid with a squad of 8 to 12 members, not 8 or 12 members. Difficulty would scale accordingly. With that said, I know current guild missions encourage large groups of people to participate in them. And I mean very large. So I would say that Raids would have to be designed like separate “wings” in a way so that the chances of people being left out is very small— being left out of a raid because it is full just plainly sucks.

What do I mean by “wings”? Let’s take Twilight Arbor for example— you have the Up wing, the Forward/Up wing, and the Forward/Forward wing. All the wings eventually end up in the same place, and that’s the Nightmare Tree. In this example, let’s say you have 30 guild members online right now, pumped up and ready to take on a Dungeon Raid. The raid could split into three groups with 10 going Up and 20 Forward. On the next split, 10 will continue Forward while 10 will take the second Upward path. Each “wing” will have different encounters of course. However, if one group’s struggling, then the Raid/Squad Leader could make some adjustments and trade people around to see fit. Eventually, all 30 members will make it to the end to fight the Ascended Nightmare Tree. Of course, this particular Nightmare Tree would have to be designed in a way so that you would need 25~40 people to kill it instead of a regular 5-man party.

Honestly, when I think of this…I think Fissure of Woe, Underworld, Deep, Urgoz, and Domain of Anguish.

All of those dungeons were great in their own right, even if GW1 invinca-builds were way too prevalent. I’d love to see some 8-12 people, difficult, long dungeons with multiple quest parts like we had in GW1.

Size:

~10 would be a maximum, good mechanics could be done with 5. We already have World Events for the 40 person zerg fest and with the lack of solid roles it would make things difficult to coordinate who is doing what.

Design:

I see two valid options:

1) An open instance with multiple bosses that you could fight in any particular order. For those of you that have played WoW during Cataclysm, think Fire Lands but without the trash. There would be one final boss that you’d fight after all other bosses have been beaten. Upon beating each boss you’d acquire an achievement or a token that would be used as proof of entry to the final boss.

2) A linear dungeon approach but without trash. Just boss after boss perhaps with environmental obstacles/jump puzzles in between. To prevent tedium or lock outs we could have a token option as mentioned where you could jump to a certain part of the raid if all members have beaten the content up to a certain point.

Difficulty/Mechanics:

Class Roles: They do exist in the game, but their importance is horridly balanced. DPS dominates in this role. The game needs mechanics that can not be mitigated by killing something as fast as possible. With that being said here are some ideas for mechanics that incorporate what the other roles bring to the table:

Support:

-Unavoidable damage that requires buffs in the form of regen or protection
-Providing Combo Fields, Cleanses, Reflects, or other utilities for the purpose of making it through debuffs/projectiles that personal utilities won’t be enough for

Control:

-Interrupt or wipe mechanics
-Add control that can’t simply be DPS’d down
-Mechanics involving someone being able to soak up damage but not in the sense of tank n spank. Maybe a button/switch needs to be pressed in an area with a continuous DoT.

These mechanics wouldn’t require a trinity. The reason being that classes can go hybrid and bring a little bit of each and still function well. On the other hand you could run a pure support that provides great boons/heals at the sacrifice of damage but allows their allies to go glass cannon.

I’d also like to point out that I’d like to see Combos be something that really needs to be utilized in a raid as right now it’s just a nifty little thing that people accidentally do half the time.

Loot:

-Unique drops based on dungeon
-No tokens. Tokens say that if you do the dungeon X times you will get your reward. There is a definite end.
-If there are tokens, make them buy Tier 6 Refined Mats, Tier 6 Fines and Lodestones instead of gear. This would offer potential for removing inflated prices for Lodestones, Bloods, and Dusts.
-Better drop for harder content.

Progression:

-None. It’s worth noting that Agony is an awful progression idea. It’s a gear check in a game that is suppose to not emphasize gear checks. Make the raid about coordination and proper builds and not about having the proper gear progression.

Guild Wars 2 – The Raids

Party size:
10

Reward system:
Extreme rare skins (drop chance from any mob, encourages full clear, but I’m not talking dredge fractal quantity of mobs here people)
Token/End chest rewards for more reliable pickup of new gear skins (no stat upgrades)
Unique titles for clearing certain content

Content:
Two Difficulty Scales

Normal – Average difficulty scale is higher than current explorable dungeons (harder than Arah). Regular bossfights comparable to Lupicus (Lupi has been SOLOED, not that hard once you know what you’re doing, regardless of prof makeup). Knowledge of boss attacks, in-depth knowledge of profession and movement ability required. Good party makeup makes things a bit easier. Exotic gear is almost necessary, but not required if matched with player skill. Armor/Wep skins and title for completion of certain raid dungeons.

Ascended – Difficulty for the top 1-3% of GW2 gamers. Tough, challenging content. Introduces unique dungeons that focus on less trash/more really tough boss fights. Supreme movement, prof knowledge, party makeup, trait builds required. Possible requirement of Defiance stack management to keep Raid group alive. Very unforgiving, making a mistake will get you punished and you will wipe. Never-before-seen boss mechanics, requiring even skills unknown at this time (comparable to Simin spark-kiting but in other variances). Time to seek out and form a guild of good, skilled people and develop some relationships. Rewarded with unique armor/weapon skins and pristine titles. Legends and memories will be made by clearing any Ascended dungeon content.

Limited Acess/Server Pride/Sense of Achievement:
I would very much like to see limited-access Raid content (similar to SAB) This content would be available for say a month each year, with background and story tied into the opening (it could reappear in later years/months) What this would introduce is a sense of urgency to learning and defeating hard content in GW2, something that currently does not exist. In terms of Server Pride and Sense of Achievement, we need the equivalent (sorry to compare) of Onyxia’s Head; Visual city rewards/buffs that can represent the challenges certain groups have overcome. (e.×. giant Dragon corpse hung in LA, Dragonhead on a post in your WvW Keeps)

Bottom line – No one really wants stat upgrades. We want some cool looking gear, and we want to be challenged. I would like to see the agony mechanic infused with these raids, but the current formula (keep piling on AR) is flawed and unnecessary, make a cap at 20/30/whatever. Then scale boss fights around this point (causing damage similar to FotM Maw at 0AR) whittling someone down ALMOST to the point of death. Pop your cooldowns and survive this time, but probably not next.

my2c

The temple of the jade dragon
5 players (I’m sticking with the established number here)

The core concept

I believe that much like the Fractal dungeons or SAB, a raid is fun if it does something entirely different. To honor this idea, this rough concept is all about classic martial arts movies. The idea is to make the players feel powerful.

The hub

The team starts in an area where they can repair equipment and sell loot. From here they can go in any direction, and seek out bosses in any order. Each boss unlocks a special power that stays active during the raid. On top of that, the players must also unlock all the doors to the final boss, which they can do in any order.

Special powers

Defeating a boss, gives players access to a shrine that gives them a special power that lasts the entire raid. These powers stack, and you can earn them in any order. For example, the player might receive permanent double attack speed. Double stamina for dodging. Flaming weapons. Or a permanent double of himself, that copies his actions. Thus the team can grow to up to 10 (5 doubles, but no doubles for pets and minions). All of these powers will be needed to take down the final boss.

Just before the final boss, the players can obtain their ultimate power up, which they can only use once during the battle. This attack does double damage, and is especially powerful when combined with the power of other players. See it as a sort of one-time super attack.

Opponents

The players will fight various ninja like opponents, who become increasingly easier to defeat as the players become more powerful. There are also certain mini boss enemies that will be too tough at first, but easy later on with the power ups.

Unique fighting conditions

In each area of the temple, the players will be faced with unique situations to fight in. Such as fighting in total darkness (the flaming weapons will give off light, making this easier), fighting in a room full of traps, fighting on platforms above shark infested waters, and fighting through destructible partitioned rooms. The temple will accommodate furniture that can be used as weapons, and which do double damage (often instantly killing normal enemies). Any one-use item found in the temple is overpowered, giving players a great feeling of satisfaction as they quickly take out multiple foes in a row.

On top of this, each boss room also has one minor effect that randomly is present or not, when ever you enter the raid. Thus keeping these fights interesting. They may be easy, or they may be harder. This may lead players to not always do the bosses in the same order every single time.

Traps

The temple includes many well hidden traps, some of which will be randomly selected to litter the halls bridging the various sections of the temple. None of these are insta-kill traps. And will only down a player at best. Players will not drop into pits they can’t escape from. Instead they will be respawned back in a safe place, where they can be revived. All traps will also affect enemies the same as they affect players. Most really dangerous traps can be deactivated once passed by one player. Others must simply be avoided by paying attention where you step.

None linear

Players are free to explore the temple in any order they wish, but they must eventually open all the doors to the final boss. They are allowed to skip enemies if they wish.

Loot

All enemies have a minor chance to drop rare loot, making killing trash mobs rewardable. Each boss has a chest with some guaranteed good loot. And the final boss drops a chest with enough rewards to make doing the whole raid worth while. Unique skins might be fun to collect, but are not needed to make this raid enjoyable.

Platforming

Some areas of the temple require platforming to reach switches, and open doors to other areas. Only one players needs to activate the lever for the rest to pass, allowing players that hate platforming to let other team members do their dirty work. Teleporting to cheat is highly encouraged. Players do not have to play by the rules for this.

Underwater

For variation sake, the raid mixes up land sections with short underwater sections. Underwater combat however, is kept to a minimum. But underwater traps can be expected.

Randomized reward chests

Random bonus treasure chests spawn in the temple, often behind destructible partitions and hidden rooms, thus encouraging exploration.

Strong focus on humor

Since this is a tribute to classic martial arts, it shouldn’t be taken too serious. Enemies in the raid may yell out cliche quotes, and exaggeration of the violence is key. Players should have fun.

I liked Global Agendas Raids – Basically you protected a point of interest if it took to much damage you failed. It required 10 people. Raid would happen every 60 minutes. Love to see something like this with a chest at the end.

Stooperdale.3560:

What benefits do you want from an 8+ person raid that can’t be found in a 5 person group? Bigger is not necessarily better. A need for coordinated teamwork between 10 or more players is as much of a drawback as a benefit and will exclude many players (outside of guilds) from completing the content.

Open world events should provide the massive multi-player content although they could certainly be improved. Guild bounties also provide coordination challenges for more than 5 players with some challenging fights.

I would like to see content that larger groups could partake in that is not a simple, boring event chain or a world boss that gets zerged down/camped and farmed. Also, the guild bounties are hardly entertaining or full of content. It’s a whole bunch of looking and then a fight? And you are required to be in the same guild to do it. Not everyone has all of their friends in the same guild or a guild that is willing to just randomly invite people to accommodate them for bounties.

Instanced content for slightly larger groups would be entertaining and interesting. Not sure why you seem opposed to it other than just to be one of those random forumers who want to be contrary.

Oolune.4357:

Stooperdale.3560:

What benefits do you want from an 8+ person raid that can’t be found in a 5 person group? Bigger is not necessarily better. A need for coordinated teamwork between 10 or more players is as much of a drawback as a benefit and will exclude many players (outside of guilds) from completing the content.

Open world events should provide the massive multi-player content although they could certainly be improved. Guild bounties also provide coordination challenges for more than 5 players with some challenging fights.

I would like to see content that larger groups could partake in that is not a simple, boring event chain or a world boss that gets zerged down/camped and farmed. Also, the guild bounties are hardly entertaining or full of content. It’s a whole bunch of looking and then a fight? And you are required to be in the same guild to do it. Not everyone has all of their friends in the same guild or a guild that is willing to just randomly invite people to accommodate them for bounties.

Instanced content for slightly larger groups would be entertaining and interesting. Not sure why you seem opposed to it other than just to be one of those random forumers who want to be contrary.

The initial question he asks is a good point. What is having dungeons be 8+ really providing to the challenge? With the current state of how each role (DPS, Support, Control) is weighted and how mechanics are implemented, I think that having more than 5 would offer little diversity. Change needs to occur before bigger parties will offer more diversity.

I think the important change that needs to be implemented before raid-like content can be fully utilized is a shift from the DPS meta. Support and Control are just under utilized and there will need to be mechanics implemented into dungeons that not only encourage, but require Support and Control. I’m not talking Trinity here, but rather the use of Support/Control skills over pure DPS. Any class has the ability to balance DPS, Support and Control in addition to going a more pure role. People could still roll in a party of 5 Warriors because 5 Warriors could trait and skill to strike a balance between the 3 roles.

The benefit of having bigger raid group (8-10) is so more individuals can actually participate and play together. Dungeons are notorious for splitting individuals and guildmates into small groups; many miss the fun of playing with more people.

I think 10 would be a great middle ground, but would even like to see 25 man raid dungeons introduced!

George Steel.1804:

The benefit of having bigger raid group (8-10) is so more individuals can actually participate and play together. Dungeons are notorious for splitting individuals and guildmates into small groups; many miss the fun of playing with more people.

I think 10 would be a great middle ground, but would even like to see 25 man raid dungeons introduced!

I agree it does that, but I’d like to see them have some kind of mechanics associated with this too. Something as basic as soaking up AoEs that do damage divided by the number of players hit so that you’d need 3-5 people to stack on different 2-3 different locations so that they can block AoE damage but still survive the damage: Think Dragon Soul in Cata just before Warmaster Blackthorn.

It’s fine letting guildies group in bigger groups, but we need better mechanics for larger groups than simply adding on more damage and hp.

IamDuddits.1692:

George Steel.1804:

The benefit of having bigger raid group (8-10) is so more individuals can actually participate and play together. Dungeons are notorious for splitting individuals and guildmates into small groups; many miss the fun of playing with more people.

I think 10 would be a great middle ground, but would even like to see 25 man raid dungeons introduced!

I agree it does that, but I’d like to see them have some kind of mechanics associated with this too. Something as basic as soaking up AoEs that do damage divided by the number of players hit so that you’d need 3-5 people to stack on different 2-3 different locations so that they can block AoE damage but still survive the damage: Think Dragon Soul in Cata just before Warmaster Blackthorn.

It’s fine letting guildies group in bigger groups, but we need better mechanics for larger groups than simply adding on more damage and hp.

Oh I completely agree, I really want to see some challenging and interesting mechanics involved. I’m sad that the only fights with any significance in GW2 for me were Simin (spark kiting) and Lupicus.

There’s just so much potential, and so far, little results. The dungeon content is a bit disappointing for an MMO of this caliber.

George Steel.1804:

IamDuddits.1692:

George Steel.1804:

The benefit of having bigger raid group (8-10) is so more individuals can actually participate and play together. Dungeons are notorious for splitting individuals and guildmates into small groups; many miss the fun of playing with more people.

I think 10 would be a great middle ground, but would even like to see 25 man raid dungeons introduced!

I agree it does that, but I’d like to see them have some kind of mechanics associated with this too. Something as basic as soaking up AoEs that do damage divided by the number of players hit so that you’d need 3-5 people to stack on different 2-3 different locations so that they can block AoE damage but still survive the damage: Think Dragon Soul in Cata just before Warmaster Blackthorn.

It’s fine letting guildies group in bigger groups, but we need better mechanics for larger groups than simply adding on more damage and hp.

Oh I completely agree, I really want to see some challenging and interesting mechanics involved. I’m sad that the only fights with any significance in GW2 for me were Simin (spark kiting) and Lupicus.

There’s just so much potential, and so far, little results. The dungeon content is a bit disappointing for an MMO of this caliber.

You forgot to add Kholer to that list. According to the mass threads about AC, Kholer is an incredibly challenging boss fight….

With that being said, I would love to see some really awesome boss fight mechanics but it will really depend on if the community is willing to learn basic mechanics. I agree there is a lot of potential. I’d really love to see some usage of Comboing.

Lupi was a very fun fight, but I haven’t done Simin. What exactly is the spark kiting mechanic for Simin, besides the obvious response? Why do you have to kite the sparks? Is he Arah?

I actually think the Temple fights in Orr aren’t too bad. Still a tank n spank Zerg, but at least the bosses have mechanics you have to look out for.

Simin with 5 statues and 25 sparks. Each spark fixates on a single player and you HAVE to bring them to a statue within 10 seconds or she instantly heals to 100%.

Her HP pool and stealth time are scaled up accordingly.

Also get this guys,
Get this.
Let’s have a boss, right?
In the overworld.
That scales incredibly fast.
On a 6-minute timer.
With a fire shield that hits you like a train.
That you have to remove in order to do ANY damage to him besides looking at him funny.
In order to do so, everyone has to stop DPS.
And then remove his boons without DPSing.
And then remove his defiant stacks without DPSing.
And then remove his stability without DPS.
And then using knockback that doesn’t do damage.

And then some random shows up and ruins it.

Oh wait, it’s Komali.

Rather than with pure instancing, I think the perfect place to implement something like this would be with more pseudo-instances like the Font of Rhand and Vexa’s Lab. This allows for scaling, but still has a gating mechanic that discourages zerging to a point.

Also, it would have to be scalable – no matter how it was implemented. I would hate the idea of an instanced fight that required a set number of people greater than 5. As a guild leader, there is no greater headache than having 11 people show up for a 10 man event. Five allows for informal grouping – anything higher becomes a “guild event.”

As far as adding complexity without giving griefers a field day, there are many ways to do it – coordinated switches, safe zones that people need to stand in during abilities, adds with devastating abilities (requiring target prioritization), boss abilities/immunities that require environmental weapons to counter, etc.

Blaeys.3102:

Rather than with pure instancing, I think the perfect place to implement something like this would be with more pseudo-instances like the Font of Rhand and Vexa’s Lab. This allows for scaling, but still has a gating mechanic that discourages zerging to a point.

Also, it would have to be scalable – no matter how it was implemented. I would hate the idea of an instanced fight that required a set number of people greater than 5. As a guild leader, there is no greater headache than having 11 people show up for a 10 man event. Five allows for informal grouping – anything higher becomes a “guild event.”

As far as adding complexity without giving griefers a field day, there are many ways to do it – coordinated switches, safe zones that people need to stand in during abilities, adds with devastating abilities (requiring target prioritization), boss abilities/immunities that require environmental weapons to counter, etc.

Exactly!

I’ve always hated back in my WoW days to see some people in my guild sit out of a 25-man raid because it was full, not because they were unwanted. Heck, I wish I could bring them along, but the content wasn’t designed for more than 25 people (well, unless you wanted to do some of the older raids that allowed 40 people in the raid group, which the newer content deemed the older content somewhat trivial due to new gear and higher level caps).

The beauty of the Guild Mission system is that a varied number of people can participate and won’t feel left out due to party size restrictions. The event could start with 20 guild members participating in the Raid. However, if a few more people start logging on a little bit later, those latecomers can also participate if the Raid is still in progress. Meaning that they don’t feel left out because of outside commitments. The only current in-game restriction is world exploration, but even that could easily be rectified at any given time.

To start, the current Dynamic Event system is here to see how well the servers handle zergs-on-zergs of people doing the content. The Guild Mission system then sets the foundation of how organized guild content could work. I think it was pretty genius to have the initial set of Guild Missions work on the outside world and use pre-existing assets instead of creating brand new assets. If the Guild Missions work out the way they should and many guilds of various sizes are doing them, then it could be possible to open up the possibility for large-scale instanced PvE content— or simply known as a Raid Dungeon.

Speaking from experience in doing Guild Missions with my guild, I know that I see 50~80 people online on a Sunday night working as one big entity (instead of smaller segregated entities) in taking on a collective set of bounties instead of our own personal bounties. I would hate to see some of those people left out because “Oh! The raid’s full. Oh well.” Overflow servers give us enough grief already when doing world events. I don’t think we would want to have that same kind of grief when it comes to dungeon content.

I suppose the drawback here would be for players who just stick to their small group of friends or go solo. In that case, a guild-sponsored raid could send out a public invitation using the in-game LFG (when it becomes implemented) asking for outsiders to assist them in the Raid Dungeon. These puggers could accept the invitation and assist the guild in whatever seems necessary to complete the Raid Dungeon. Once completed, these pugs could then be awarded the same rewards as those received by members of the hosting guild. These would include Guild Commendations, Dungeon Tokens, Gold, Karma, and Laurels.

As far as the actual Raid Dungeon goes, I suppose it could be bigger versions of the current 8 dungeons (though I think Arah seems big enough to fit a raid party already— it doesn’t need to be any bigger than that).

I think we need more people to bump this thread some good stuff here. Just to add onto it a bit I think 10 man at least would be optimal because 5 man content feels to small making support feel less needed to to the amount of players. This may help the dps to win problem. Also this would make combo fields feel more needed with more people able to put them down and use them as a finisher. Mechanics like needing a person with a water field to blast finish to help sustain an aoe boss hit. Also for loot since you can make bosses drop stuff that can be part of a legendary on the hardest difficulty. Like obsidian shards or beating last boss gives a couple clovers and lodestones. As well as unique looks. The game right now is lacking ways for good players to show skill. Tpvp is about it WvW is a zerg fest which biggest group generally wins, and the dungeons are super easy and just a grind for cosmetics.

Baneful.5843:

I think we need more people to bump this thread some good stuff here. Just to add onto it a bit I think 10 man at least would be optimal because 5 man content feels to small making support feel less needed to to the amount of players. This may help the dps to win problem. Also this would make combo fields feel more needed with more people able to put them down and use them as a finisher. Mechanics like needing a person with a water field to blast finish to help sustain an aoe boss hit. Also for loot since you can make bosses drop stuff that can be part of a legendary on the hardest difficulty. Like obsidian shards or beating last boss gives a couple clovers and lodestones. As well as unique looks. The game right now is lacking ways for good players to show skill. Tpvp is about it WvW is a zerg fest which biggest group generally wins, and the dungeons are super easy and just a grind for cosmetics.

Support and Control don’t feel less needed, they simply feel like a hindrance. The only real support is Mesmer because they give all the utility the meta needs.

For complex mechanics to exist they need to force players into something more than DPSing as fast as possible. There is just nothing in terms of mechanics that require you to do any thing a glass cannon Zerker can’t do.

GW2 Raid

Almost everything for a fun, enjoyable, unique raiding experience is already in the game. It just needs to be brought together. Here’s an unoriginal idea I probably read in these forums at some point.

Instanced Versus NPC WvW Borderland
You and your team begin in a tower or keep of some kind. You have about 5 minutes to set up a preliminary defense and pick your difficulty. Defenses include Siege, placement, NPCs, and moving some of your guildies to nearby locations. You are confined to an area around the tower.

After set up time occurs, the NPC’s attack… Depenending on difficutly the type varise, but the important part is it is pretty relentless.
Start with melee mobs rushing at your gate.
Bring in archers.
Bring in engineers trying to set up siege.
Bring in dredge tunnlers inside your court yard.
Bring in charr tanks that care not for your gate.
Bring in Harpies dropping goblins on your battlements.
Bring in air ships to bombard you from above.
Bring a kitten Dragon if it’s hard enough. Lets see your guild hold a tower against a living fire breathing flying siege engine.

Keep the supply concept from WvW in here. Force a split in your raid to get supplies and maintain supply lines. Force your raid to figure out how to get across the map to take out an ‘asuran siege laser’ from a nearby keep.

Lets not stop there, lets have bonus chests spawn around the map. They are locked, so you get a team with a Dolyak to capture it and it’s brought back to your tower so everyone can open it. But can you spare enough people to retrieve it? Can you clear a big enough path through the horde to get it in? Risk Versus Reward!

You hold out long enough (Say 30 minutes to an hour) and Destinys Edge (or someone) comes in with the cavalry to relieve you. Your raid gets a nice big chest and progress towards a title of some kind. Probably some guild commendations too.

Boom something that is easily tweakable, quite a lot of fun (hopefully), and with enough variance you shouldn’t get bored. Plenty of potential for bonus events, and enough enemy variation and staying power required that builds that aren’t pure DPS should be able to excell and really contribute.

Size
Min 5 to whatever. GW2 has scaling and they are testing the new scaling system which can make things pretty tough (think Krait Lab near Teq for example). Probalby want to cap it somewhere around 20 for sanity sake.

Variants
Maps are the ‘easy’ one. Holding a Tower versus Holding a Keep versus Holding a Stonemist like structure. Even Holding a supply camp could be entertaing. This idea is easy to expand to say the least.

IamDuddits.1692:

Baneful.5843:

I think we need more people to bump this thread some good stuff here. Just to add onto it a bit I think 10 man at least would be optimal because 5 man content feels to small making support feel less needed to to the amount of players. This may help the dps to win problem. Also this would make combo fields feel more needed with more people able to put them down and use them as a finisher. Mechanics like needing a person with a water field to blast finish to help sustain an aoe boss hit. Also for loot since you can make bosses drop stuff that can be part of a legendary on the hardest difficulty. Like obsidian shards or beating last boss gives a couple clovers and lodestones. As well as unique looks. The game right now is lacking ways for good players to show skill. Tpvp is about it WvW is a zerg fest which biggest group generally wins, and the dungeons are super easy and just a grind for cosmetics.

Support and Control don’t feel less needed, they simply feel like a hindrance. The only real support is Mesmer because they give all the utility the meta needs.

For complex mechanics to exist they need to force players into something more than DPSing as fast as possible. There is just nothing in terms of mechanics that require you to do any thing a glass cannon Zerker can’t do.

Which is part of the problem i agree, support and control roles need to be built upon for a raid environment to succeed as it will allow for more complex fights and roles. I think control is needed the most just to allow other things to happen so the boss just doesnt run after whomever .